1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a portable communication terminal and a method of transmission of an electronic mail and, more particularly, to a method of transmission of an electronic mail by use of a portable communication terminal which can detect a passage through a passage verification apparatus including a gate and ticket gate through which a passage is verified and by use of a portable communication terminal equipped with a non-contact IC card.
2. Description of the Related Art
There are an increasing number of people who are using a mail function of a cellular phone in accordance with rising proliferation of portable communication terminals such as cellular phones. The use of this mail function is accelerating in various communication scenarios, such as occasions of rendezvous in railway stations and theaters, and communications to inform on leaving for home from the railway stations and the theaters. Moreover, the cellular phone has excellent portability. Consequently, with a non-contact IC card equipped therein, a service in which the cellular phone is used to pass through an entrance/exit of theaters is under consideration. And a service in which the cellular phone is used to pass through a ticket gate of railway stations is under consideration.
For example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-298169 discloses a routing assistance system using a portable communication terminal equipped with a non-contact IC card. In this routing assistance system, information on a commuter pass such as a usable range of stations and a valid time period for commuting are previously stored in the non-contact IC card.
At the first time, automatic ticket gating is performed using the information on the commuter pass through the non-contact IC card when the portable communication terminal passes through an automatic gate. At the time when the automatic gating is performed, the portable communication terminal receives information on the entrance station transmitted from the automatic ticket gate, and in addition the current time is acquired from the inside clock means. Next, the portable communication terminal receives destination information from the user prior or even after passing through the automatic ticket gate. Thereafter, the portable communication terminal transmits information on the entrance station, the time at entrance, and the destination to a route search server. Finally, the portable communication terminal receives a result of route search from the route search server, and displays it.
As described above, the routing assistance system disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-298169 uses a portable communication terminal equipped with a non-contact IC card as a portable communication terminal for substituting a commuter pass. However, this system only allows a user of the portable communication terminal to pass through a ticket gate, using this portable communication terminal as a commuter pass based on the functionality of a non-contact IC card. Adding to this, the system only allows the portable communication terminal to display a routing assistance when passing through a ticket gate.
Therefore, in the conventional portable communication terminal described hereinbefore, it is not possible for the portable communication terminal to automatically transmit an electronic mail with which the passage of the terminal at a ticket gate is reported to someone to whom a user of the terminal wants to inform his passage at the ticket gate.
Because of this, in the conventional portable communication terminal, a user of the portable communication terminal manually writes an electronic mail which the user wants to transfer at the time of exit and entrance at a ticket gate. Then, the user manually transmits the electronic mail to someone to whom the user wants to send an electronic mail. It is bothersome. Here, the content to be transferred by the electronic mail is a message, for example, “On the way home from the station”, “Arrival at an exit of the station” or “Now, entering the station and on the way to get to the destination”